M. Olszewski has, by the aid of excessively low temperatures, liquefied the more permanent gases at pressures averaging only 740 millimetres, and has also determined the boiling-points, melting-points, and densities at atmospheric pressure. The boiling-points have thus been determined: Of methane, -16·1° centigrade; oxygen -181·4°;—nitrogen, -194·4°; carbon monoxide, -190°; and nitric oxide, -153·6°. The melting-point of carbon monoxide was also determined to be -207°, and that of nitrogen -214°. M. Olszewski's nearest approach to absolute zero was -225° C, or -373° Fahr., for solid nitrogen. The density of methane at 736 mm. and -164° C, was found to be 0·415; that of oxygen at 743 mm., and -181·4° was 1·124; and that of nitrogen at 741 mm. and -194·4° was 0·885.
Professor Schnitzler has described a curious moss which grows at the depth of two hundred feet in the sub-lacustrine moraine of Yvoire. It contains grains of chlorophyl perfectly formed.
Count August von Marschall, Director of the Archives of the Geologische Reichanstalt of Vienna, died recently near that city, at the age of eighty-two years. He was the author of several scientific works.
Oscar Harger, Assistant Professor of Paleontology in Yale College, died in New Haven, November 6. He was born in 1843, was graduated from Yale in 1878, and, having devoted himself to the study of Natural History, became a co-worker with Professor Marsh. He was on the staff of the dredging expedition of the coast-survey steamer Bach to St. George's Banks in 1871, and accompanied Professor Marsh on his geological expeditions in 1871 and 1873. Among his contributions to scientific literature were the catalogue of isopods in Verril and Smith's "Invertebrata of Southern New England," and "A Report on the Marine Isopoda of New England and Adjacent Waters."
M. H. Bayard, who recently died in Paris at the age of eighty-one years, discovered a photographic process, in 1839, almost simultaneously with Daguerre and Talbot, He delayed to perfect and publish his discovery and thereby lost the priority which it is asserted he might easily have claimed.
The death is reported of Dr. E. Luther, Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Königsberg, Germany, in the eighty-first year of his age.
Dr. Robert Caspart, Professor of Botany in the University of Königsberg, died recently from the effects of a fall downstairs. He was born in 1818, and, while not a prolific writer, was well known to botanists as a critical authority on Nymphæaceæ.
The Rev. William S. Symonds, F. G. S., rector of Pendock, who died September l.'i, was an earnest student of British geology, and contributed papers to the scientific periodicals on the rocks and fossils of the west of England. He paid, however, more attention to physical geology than to paleontology; and was greatly interested in the phenomena of the glacial drifts, and in questions relating to the antiquity of prehistoric man. He was the author of "Records of the Rocks," "Old Stones," and "Old Bones," of more than forty papers in scientific journals, and of the romances "Malvern Chase" and "Hornby Castle."
Joseph Maxendell, a British meteorologist and astronomer of eminent local reputation, died in Southport, October 7, in the seventy-second year of his age. He is declared by Balfour Stewart to have been the pioneer in the suggestion of the eleven-year sun-spot theory of meteorological cycles, and to have been the first to propose the use of storm-signals as they are now adopted by all maritime nations. He was a member of many learned societies at home and abroad.
Robert Hunt, F. R. S., keeper of the British Mining Records, died October 17, in the eighty-first year of his age. He had been writing on scientific subjects for nearly fifty years. While a medical student, he became acquainted with pharmaceutical chemistry. During a walking tour, he collected the materials for a bock on west of England folk-lore. He studied and wrote upon photography, crystallization, the chemical action of light (in relation to which he introduced the term actinism), the influence of colored media on plant-germination and growth, and other kindred subjects. He was the originator of the publication of statistical returns of the mineral produce of the United Kingdom; and in 1866 was one of the commissioners to inquire into the stock of unworked coal in the mines. He published, in 1884, a comprehensive book on British mining. He was author of works on the "Poetry of Science," "Panthea, or the Spirit of Nature," and "Handbooks" of the great Exhibitions of 1851 and 1852; and he edited, after Dr. Ure's death, the successive editions of that author's "Dictionary of Arts."
Mr. Thomas Bolton, of the Microscopists' and Naturalists' Studio, Birmingham, England, died November 7th. His services as a naturalist and microscopist were recognized several months ago by the award of a civil-service medal, in connection with which a memorial, signed by many eminent men of science, was presented, setting forth his claims and discoveries.
